Chickens Belittled

Can district students learn about the circle of life without live animals?

by J.F. Pirro

education

OVA THE TOP: As environmental educator at Wissahickon Charter School, Kristi Littell teaches one of the few remaining chick- hatching programs. Photo By: Michael T. Regan (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

One class project at Wissahickon Charter School starts simply enough. Fifty third-graders eat a huge community-sponsored breakfast in the cafeteria, replete with scrambled eggs, bacon and the works. Then, over the next 10 weeks, they use the menu to trace the origin of the foods they've eaten.

At week six, a chick-hatching project helps them realize that eggs they eat were never meant to hatch, that chickens are not only confined to cages and shot with hormones to lay eggs, but that cage-free eggs are a viable alternative.

By week nine, the class walks to the Fresh Grocer in Germantown, which, along with the Trolley Car Diner in Chestnut Hill, donates the breakfast. The first question the kids ask is if the store sells cage-free eggs. It does.

By the end of the life-sciences unit, students are convinced that buying local produce is best, and that consumable animal products should be produced humanely. Many wish such products were more available and affordable, so the unit tends to lead to homework in the form ofguaranteed dinner-table discussion.

"The parents are ready to ring our necks," says Kristi Littell, Wiss-ahickon's environmental educator. "At home, they begin asking for cage-free eggs. Families discuss the cost differences, so it's a decision that impacts other choices at the grocery store."

Wissahickon Charter, a K-8 school off of Roosevelt Boulevard where Germantown, East Falls and Nicetown converge, may be unique because it was founded on an environmental-ecological curriculum. But it's also unusual because it's one of a shrinking number of city schools that encourage and allow hands-on springtime chick hatchings.

Because of health and safety concerns and a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advisory, not to mention the concerns of animal-rights activists, the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) has been phasing out such live-animal projects, particularly in preschool grades.

"We know 3- and 4-year-olds do not wash their hands," says Jennifer Plummer Davis, an administrator who in 2004 banned chick hatchings in the city's 90 federally funded Head Start schools and in the 23 childcare centers she oversees. "They put them in their mouths. We don't want to take that chance."

Increasingly, the country is being kept from the city, as are its lessons of life, death, and empathy for both. The Penn State Cooperative Extension 4H in Philadelphia says its embryology projects teach "respect for all living organisms," so in a city with an unprecedented spike in gun violence, couldn't children benefit from focusing on "life" instead of death?

At the very least, there's inconsistency and inequity where students a year or two older still do chick-hatching projects in both charter and regular public schools. Despite teachers' assertions of having received a memo banning the practice, at some district schools, outside organizations still pay for the chicks (In such a large district, it's hard for administrators to keep tabs on every class project). But at W.B. Saul High School for Agricultural Sciences in Roxborough, chickens disappeared from campus last year, according to Thomas L. Scott, who retired Feb. 9 as principal but has remained as a consultant. (The coops are being converted into a creamery.)

By design, Scott says Saul has become more science-oriented and less pragmatic. Yet, the disappearance of traditional chick-hatchings at the younger grades disheartens him. "Those projects are important for this reason alone: If kids don't know the source of their food, then how can they protect that source?" he asks.

Jackie Simon, an Extension educator, says a decade ago, 11,000 embryology, or chick-hatching, projects were administered in Philadelphia County schools. Five years ago, there were 5,000, then just 2,000 last year.

Where once there were five coordinators like her, today, it's just Simon and an assistant.

Simon blames the dwindling number of projects on the SDP's budget woes, a sue-happy culture and the increasing importance of standardized testing. "With all that testing, forget about getting into the schools in March," she says. "Then again, a lot of our teachers can't afford incubators," which cost $60 plus another $40 to host a project.

Private chick-hatching providers like Quiver Farm Projects Inc. in Montgomery County report that their Philly sales have been cut by more than half. (Quiver once handled more than 50 pre-K schools alone in Plummer Davis' Head Start programs.)

Ernestine Redd, who oversees more than 60 Bright Futures and Comprehensive Early Learning Centers, points to a CDC "health alert" for children age 5 and under with regard to handling baby chicks and ducklings, as well as reptiles like lizards, snakes and turtles, and amphibians like frogs (which are part of the new curriculum), toads, newts and salamanders.

Even Curtis Allen, a CDC spokesperson, says that while salmonella, the main concern, can cause fever, diarrhea and stomach pain after a child has touched a surface infected with animal feces, the concern is more about hygiene. Yet, risk is relative and can depend upon age, according to Amy Guerin, a district spokesperson. Plummer Davis says her decision to ban chick hatchings resulted from the bird flu scare and the risk that young birds could carry salmonella. The district has since implemented an alternative life-sciences curriculum which includes silk worms, which grow into butterflies; and tadpoles, which become frogs. It's also lumped seed germination into the new mix. (The district considers this adequate for life-sciences teaching purposes.)

Peg Hailey, Quiver's CEO, says the district told her that when the federal funds supporting the projects in the Head Start schools were pulled, the district had to foot the bill itself. So, it cut the hatching projects. Quiver hasn't had a decline in business in New Jersey or Delaware, but now only contracts with about 12 Philadelphia teachers or schools, and only where teachers, parents, home-and-school associations or outside organizations pay for the projects.

Such is the case at Clara Barton, a K-2 school on Roosevelt Boulevard in Feltonville, where teacher Elaine Cubbage has been funding and hosting chick hatchings since 1985. Her Quiver eggs arrived April 9, then hatched a week later.

Her students — she calls them "first grade farmers" — name each egg, then turn them four times a day until they hatch. "They get to feel like the mother hen," Cubbage says. "This is what nature does to you."

Animal rights activists, however, argue that when the 4H chicks are returned after a week at school, they're euthanized by the Philadelphia Zoo, then returned to the food chain.

"They go to the crocodiles," says Philly activist Beverly Rolfs-meyer. "That's the part the kids don't see."

And Karen Davis, president of the Machipongo, Va.-based United Poultry Concerns, also says hatching projects are ill-advised. She offers two booklets of alternatives for teaching about avian embryology and the lives of chickens.

"Many are born deformed or crippled or die at hatching," Rolfsmeyer says of activist claims that the animals are harmed because of unnatural surroundings and being handled by the students. "It's a nice thing for a school group, but it's not a nice thing for the chickens. What an awful way to come in and out of the world."

Quiver's Mart, however, argues that death is part of life. From an educational standpoint, there's something both simple and special about witnessing a chick peck through the shell of a common egg, its tangible point of origination.

"For kids who have tuned out, put a live animal in front of them, and they plug back in," Littell says. "Regardless of age, it leads to questions, questions and more questions, and that's perfect in an inquiry-based curriculum. ... My understanding in the [rest of the] school district is that they say, 'Here's the script.'

"The chicks are irresistible, but more than that, we believe [the projects] teach empathy. After seeing what a caged chick looks like, our kids feel a connection, like they're the chicks. So what happened? How did that little chick end up in that cage?"

(editorial@citypaper.net)